"Not since the Lord himself showed his stuff to
Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones had anyone shown such grace and
skill in the reconstruction of animals from disarticulated
skeletons. Charles R. Knight, the most celebrated of artists
in the reanimation of fossils, painted all the canonical
figures of dinosaurs that fire our fear and imagination to
this day."
-- Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life, 1989

This web site is maintained in loving memory of this
late 19th- and early 20th-century American natural history painter by his
granddaughter Rhoda Knight Kalt, Dean Hannotte, Chris Kennett and others.
We would love to know if the works
of Charles R. Knight have influenced your life.
Please feel free to email us at: Rhoda@charlesrknight.com
.

Charles Knight spent a great deal of time at this zoo, drawing and painting the wildlife. Especially Su-Lin, the first panda to reside in the Western hemisphere.The Brookfield Zoo became Su-Lin's beloved home where Charles Knight visited this special panda frequently. The artist was also a close friend of Ruth Harkness who brought this renowned panda into the United States.

*** LATE BREAKING NEWS ***

News flash:

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Has just opened a special exhibit:

The Scientific Art of Charles R. Knight

It is scheduled through April 26th, 2015 in the R.P.Simmons Family Gallery

--------------------------------------------------

In a recent UK Post Office blog post, Charles R. Knight (1874-1953) was recognized as the most influential paleoartrist of the early 20th century.

Charles R. Knight’s work has appeared in encyclopedias, textbooks and his murals and sculptures have appeared in museums around the world.

Visit the UK Post Office Blog page.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The famous "Tiger and Peacock" painting is going on special exhibit at the Hudson River Museum
511 Warburton Avenue
Yonkers, New York 10701

Exhibit: Strut:The Peacock and Beauty in Art

October 11th 2014 through January 18th 2015

Nittany Mineralogical Society Will be holding a special meeting October 15th 2014
Dr.Charles E. Miller, Jr. Geologist Will be speaking on "Charles R. Knight - Art and Geology"
Rhoda Knight Kalt will be giving the introduction.
Social Hour begins 6:30pm Lecture begins 7:30 pm
Penn State Campus The Earth and Engineering Building State College, Penn.

Charles R. Knight in new Attenborough book

Fine color reproductions of two magnificent Charles R. Knight paintings
appear in a new book on "Drawn from Paradise: The Discovery, Art & Natural History of the Birds of Paradise" by Sir David Attenborough
and Errol Fuller, was published in 2012 in Great Britain by the publisher Harper Collins. These rare
surviving examples of Knight's bird pictures are the Splendid Astrapia from
the Central Highlands of New Guinea, and the Greater Bird of Paradise. Both
appear to have been painted from living specimens in the Bronx Zoo during
the late 1920s. There is a lovely colorized photograph of the artist Charles R. Knight on p.244. It shows him sitting at his studio, at his easel.

Knight is in good company in this splendid new art book. Other paintings in the volume are works by Rembrandt, Rubens, Breughel, and the renowned Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais._________________________________________

Illustrated lecture and book signing, 'Charles R. Knight; The Artist Who Saw Through Time" by the author-speaker, Richard Milner, is planned for Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012 at 2 P.M., at the Staten Island Museum, 75 Stuyvensant Place, Staten Island, New York

_________________________________________

The Salmagundi Club hosted a
special exhibit of Charles Knight's two tiger paintings, "Bengal Tiger
with Peacock" and "Tiger Holding Hunters at Bay," in their classic
Parlor Room.

The Salmagundi Club is 137 years old. It has
been featuring the work of artists such as Childe Hassam, N.C.Wyeth,
William Merrit Chase, Louis Comfort Tiffany, along with members such as
Sir Winston Churchill, Buckminster Fuller, and Thomas Hoving. This
exhibit of Charles R. Knight's tiger paintings continued through
June, 2011.

News flash: BAMCinematek located at 30 Lafayette
Avenue in Brooklyn, NY 11217, phone: (718) 636-4125,
honored Charles R. Knight at a four-day film festival, May 20-23, 2010
The festival is celebrated Knight's influence on the world of film,
especially "The Beast of 20,000 Fathoms";
"King Kong"; "The Lost World" and others. Alloy Orchestra has played during the silent
film of "The Lost World."
Opening night there was a panel discussion led
by Martin McQuade, film historian. Panel members are: Rhoda Knight
Kalt; Richard Milner; and Stephen Quinn.
_________________________________________

News flash: A major art book on the
life and art of Charles R. Knight. It was published and is in book stores across the country and also can be purchased on Amazon. Entitled "Charles
R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time."

This book was written by Richard Milner. It contains many of his drawings
and paintings never before published. More exciting news will follow!

_________________________________________

A Major documentary is also in the works! Joel Nathaniel Berke, of Pacific Cine Media,is the
organizer and the director of the project.
_________________________________________

A special museum tour entitled
Honoring the Life of Charles R. Knight on the 50th Anniversary of his Death
was organized by his granddaughter Rhoda Knight Kalt. Each museum
showed its own collection of Knight's art in addition to works
from the traveling exhibit.

Two very special pieces starred in the tour, the famous Bengal
Tiger and Peacock oil painting, considered his finest
tiger. Also Tiger Holding Hunters at Bay: the artist proceeded with the Hunters painting posing his two models in ancient bejewelled garb...from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. Both are linked historically with the name
of Dr. George Kunz, reknowned gemologist of Tiffany & Co., who
for years had planned to build The Kunz Museum of Charles R.
Knight Works in Pennsylvania. He hired an architect to design
the building that would house all of Knight's available work along
with some newly commissioned pieces. Among the new art was to
be the very painting of a tiger holding two spear-brandishing hunters
at bay which is was on tour, along
with an earlier Knight painting of a Bengal tiger which had been
done from a magnificent specimen at the Bronx zoo and which was
the other star of this tour. The artist proceeded with the Manchurian
painting, posing his hunters two models dressed in
ancient bejeweled garb from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but
Kunz died before his ambitious project could be completed. Fortunately
the sentimental Knight retained these paintings, and his family
agreed to not sell them to anyone else.

While the name of Charles Knight (1874-1953) may be unfamiliar
to many today, he is the man responsible for bringing dinosaurs
(and a host of other prehistoric creatures) out of the specimen
case and into the consciousness of everyday life. Through
his many sculptures, book illustrations and museum murals,
Knight influenced the way generations of Americans perceived
the ancient world.

Charles R. Knight working on Stegosaurus
in 1899

Born in Brooklyn and educated at the Polytechnic Institute,
Knight studied at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art
Students League before beginning a life-long career in the
service of natural history. His mentor in paleontology was
Edward Drinker Cope (1840-1897), Curator of Paleontology at
The Academy of Natural Sciences, who helped Knight envision
prehistoric creatures as living organisms with many of the
same behaviors as their modern counterparts.
This exhibit features a sampling of Knight's early twentieth
century artwork from the Academy's historic collections.

An exhibition at the Ewell Sale Stewart Library.
July 1 to September 12,2005
For information: www.acnatsci.org

See "What Were They Thinking," an article Charles R. Knight published in "Natural History" magazine in 1938 and now online at the magazine's web site:

http://nhmag.com/index_1938_02_pick.html

An Animated Life and The Art of Ray Harryhausen

The second volume "The Art of Ray Harryhausen" is published!
Charles R. Knight is mentioned throughout a whole chapter in this new
book, published by Aurum Press, London and Watson and Guptill, New York.

Volume 3; See Below

A Century of Model Animation

Ray Harryhausen's third book has just come out. Charles R. Knight is in the book. Please visit www.rayharryhausen.com to view more.

The authors are Tony Dalton and Ray Harryhausen.

Myths and Visions,
The Art of Ray Harryhausen, National Museum of Photography,
Film and Television, Bradford, England. Exhibition opens at the National
Museum of Photography, Film & Television on May 19, 2006 and will
tour to selected venues in the United Kingdom in 2006-07. www.nmpft.org.uk

Photographs of Charles R. Knight's paintings are included as the artist
who inspired the film industry, ranging from Willis O'Brien's "King
Kong" to the films of Ray Harryhausen, Disney, etc.: www.nmpft.org.uk

Curecanti National Recreation Area and Black Canyon of the Gunnison
National Park, Colorado, will be using twelve images of Charles R. Knight's
dinosaurs for film and videos - to help the public gain a greater appreciation
for the paleo scenes that occurred there million of years ago.

Mike O'Sullivan's article, Scientists, Artists Explore Ice Age
Los Angeles, published for the Voice of America on June
28, 2004 says that at the center of the new Page Museum "exhibit are
works by Charles R. Knight, who ... created lasting impressions of
prehistoric animals, including Ice Age mammoths and mastodons, and
much older dinosaurs."

On May 2, 2004, a rather unusual collection of
MARQUETRY,
based on the Charles R. Knight murals that decorated the
halls of the Field Museum, was auctioned by the Chait
Galleries in Beverly Hills, California -- finally reaching a
closing price of $169,750.00. Read the
description
which appeared at that time on eBay.

In April of 2004, Billboard Books published the
long-awaited autobiography of RAY HARRYHAUSEN, subtitled An Animated
Life and with a Foreword by Ray Bradbury. "If Doré
and Martin were my style," says Mr. Harryhausen, "Charles R.
Knight's wonderful interpretations of prehistoric creatures
were the basis of my models. Long before Obie [Willis
O'Brien], myself and Steven Spielberg, he put flesh on
creatures that no human had ever seen. His dinosaur and
prehistoric animal paintings and sculptures had more than
just a realistic surface quality; they also possessed
scientific reality and natural beauty. He was the first to
reconstruct prehistoric life in a romantic form and the
first to work in close collaboration with palaeontologists
to attempt to achieve scientifically accurate anatomy. His
long experience in drawing and painting live animals in
zoos, together with his romantic and vivid imagination,
helped to instill his prehistoric reconstructions with a
'charisma' only found in living creatures ...

"At the LA County Museum I vividly remember a beautiful
Knight mural on one of the walls depicting the way the tar
pits would have looked in ancient times. This, plus a
picture-book about Knight's work my mother gave me, were my
first encounters with a man who was to prove an enormous
help when the time came for me to make three-dimensional
models of these extinct beings." (page 14). You can order
the book today from
Amazon and
Barnes & Noble.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
has published a "special edition"
entitled
Dinosaurs and Other Monsters,
which contains an
article by the late Stephen J. Gould that reprints three
of the famous Knight paintings that originally appeared
in the February 1942 issue of National Geographic.

On February 6, 2004, the
Arizona Museum of Natural History
of Mesa, Arizona opened the traveling exhibit honoring Charles R. Knight
on the 50th anniversary of his death. Tom Wilson, the museum's director,
introduced Rhoda Knight Kalt and thanked her for allowing the museum to
debut the exhibit at the opening of its two-year tour. Dr. Robert McCord,
paleontologist and curator of the exhibit, spoke on Charles R. Knight
with the greatest of admiration. Rhoda Kalt then spoke of her childhood
memories of her grandfather. Carlos Hernandez, designer of the exhibit,
used an early photograph of Charles R. Knight painting to create an almost
exact replica of the artist's studio. Included are Knight's finest tiger,
Bengal Tiger and Peacock, and Knight's very last painting before
his death in 1953,
Jaguar Walking Through the Forest (see above).
Many enthusiastic Knight admirers flew across the country just to attend.
(Read February 5, 2004 press release.)

Readers of NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE enjoyed an extra treat in the
November 2003 issue. An insert contained an article entitled
"The Father of Paleo Art: Remember Charles R. Knight" which
disclosed that "To honor the anniversary of Knight's death, his
granddaughter, Rhoda Knight Kalt, unveiled previously
unknown works from the family's collection, including a sketch of
GEOGRAPHIC'STitanotherium."
It also mentioned the 50th anniversary tour and referred
readers to this website.

As you enter the exhibit you'll see a
10-foot long introductory panel highlighting
Charles R. Knight's renowned drawing of "The therapod
dinosaur Ornitholestes capturing its prey,
Archeopteryx", made for the American Museum of Natural History under
the direction of Henry Fairfield Osborn. This composition
became the standard depiction of the two animals. To this
day ornitholestes is traditionally portrayed as springing to
grasp its feathered victim.

David M. Brown has written a great article about Rhoda
and her grandfather for the January 2003 issue of
NORTHEAST MESA LIFESTYLE.

Long-time curator of paleontology at the Science Museum
of Minnesota, Bruce Erickson, has authored
Dinosaurs of the Science Museum of Minnesota: A Curator's
Notebook (ISBN911338-54-3). About 100 pages in
paperback, it's crammed with excellent photos and drawings
from the museum's extensive dinosaur collections. There are
also numerous field photos and even fold-out quarry maps.
Especially great are the photos taken in the early 1960s in
the Hell Creek featuring Bruce and "Dinosaur Jim" Jensen
excavating some beautiful Triceratops specimens. There's a
color reproduction of a Charles R. Knight painting of
Stegosaurus that was used as a "cartoon" for a mosaic in the
reptile house of the US National Zoo that's never been
published before. And you'll enjoy the little juvenile
diplodocid skull, too. This is a terrific book and very
timely as the museum will be hosting this year's SVP
meeting. You can order the book by phone at (651) 221-9414.
Price is $15.95 + $4.00 shipping. Minnesota residents add
$1.12 tax. (Thanks, Dan Varner!)

WILLIAM STOUT
has issued the Charles R. Knight Sketchbook
III, the follow-on to last year's spectacular
Charles R. Knight Sketchbook II.
Signed & numbered, 950. More than 165 drawings, etchings,
sketches and studies of prehistoric and modern animal life,
with more than 90% of this work previously unpublished.
Included are some alternate pieces that did not make it into
his Life Through the Ages: studies of caged animals,
especially large cats; several species of fish; some
interesting jewelry designs using various animals and
exhibiting Indian and Southeast Asian influences; plus one
full-page sketch of his daughter Lucy. Tributes are
included, written by Joe Kubert, Al Williamson, Bernie
Wrightson, Gregory S. Paul, Robert Peck, Doug Henderson and
others. Nearly every dinosaur book published between 1900
and 1960 contained examples of Knight's work. His renderings
so exemplified the extinct creatures that New York, Chicago
and Los Angeles all commissioned him for murals in their
natural history museums. Stout, an outstanding illustrator
of dinosaurs himself, has gathered a wonderful selection of
Knight's rare work. Terra Nova, 2003. SC, 8x11, 58 pages,
b&w.
All three sketchbooks can be ordered from
Bud Plant Comic Art.

THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE
(222 North 20th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19103,
215/448-1200) has recently added two of Knight's paintings on its
website, including the one shown here.

The Tuesday, March 11, 2003 issue of the New York Times (in
the Science Times section on page F3) featured an essay by James
Gorman entitled "The Unbearable Loneliness of Being Homo
Sapiens," about Neanderthal man and illustrated in color by a
wonderful painting by Charles R. Knight of a family
looking out from the mouth of their cave down towards a
river.

PALEOIMAGERY,
a beautiful new book by Allen A. and Diane E. Debus that traces the
evolution of dinosaurs in art, includes an entire chapter devoted
to Knight entitled "A Mythic Place in Time -- Spirit in the
Knight". It can be ordered from
Amazon
and
Barnes & Noble.

PROMENADE MAGAZINE has a beautifully illustrated
article on Charles R. Knight by Andrew Chaikin in the March 2003
issue entitled "Walking with Dinosaurs". Promenade is a 200-page
coffee-table magazine distributed in larger metropolitan
hotels.

Arizona's
Arizona Museum of Natural History
hosted a talk by Dr. Robert McCord of the
Paleontology Department and Rhoda Knight Kalt, granddaughter
of Charles R. Knight at noon on Friday, December 6, 2002 in
the Museum Theatre. Dr. McCord discussed the accomplishments
of the noted natural history painter while Rhoda Knight Kalt shared
her childhood memories of him.

YALE PEABODY
MUSEUM OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, is planning its
own special exhibit honoring the life of Charles R. Knight on the 50th
anniversary of his death. Rhoda Knight Kalt will be speaking
on her childhood memories of her grandfather. Opening date
to follow.

The SOCIETY OF ILLUSTRATORS elected Charles R. Knight, as well
as James Audobon, to their Hall of Fame in October, 2001 to celebrate
the Society's 100th year. You can buy the centennial book, "Illustrator's
43" through the Society of Illustrators,
128 East 63rd Street,
New York, NY 10021,
212/838-2560.

"Rovin writes zesty action sequences, making strong use of local
settings, placing the final showdown at the La Brea Tar Pits. Film
rights optioned by Universal Pictures for Sylvester Stallone."
The book's cover makes striking use of the classic Knight smilodon
from the American Museum of Natural History.

A book entitled
"A Dinosaur Named SUE:
The Story of the Colossal Fossil:
The World's Most Complete T. rex",
by Pat Relf with the SUE Science Team
of the Field Museum of Natural History (September, 2000),
prominently reprints on pages 26 and 27
Charles R. Knight's renowned
1920's classical interpretation, T. rex Facing Triceratops.
Available from
Amazon, the book is published by
Scholastic, Inc.,
555 Broadway,
New York, NY 10012.

Special Exhibit: Conquering Darkness; The
Art of Charles R. Knight
Opened October 21st, 2005, and continued through April 30th, 2006
at the Museum of the Earth
1259 Trumansberg Road, Ithaca, NYwww.museumoftheearth.org